No Black and White
by diepolitiker
Summary: AU fanfic. The team tries to find a girl who's been missing for years but has finally contacted her family. Reid wonders if freeing her would be what's best- after all, he's been in her shoes before. Nothing's as it seems. T for issues, violence.
1. Contact

**(A/N: This is my first Criminal Minds fanfic, and I haven't written anything on here for ages. This work is sort of a crossover between the show and a story of my own. It's AU in the sense that it is set in 2020, to allow for better technology, Reid has a much different past than the show sets forth, and in that we assume that the FBI can and does go to other countries to follow unsub(s) trail(s). Otherwise, all characters are the same. Rated T for certain ideologies, some violence, some language, and issues dealt with.)**

The tiny older woman heard the clang of her mailbox closing after the day's mail had been dropped in it. She glanced briefly at the framed picture of her granddaughter, Katie, caught in a brief moment of happiness on the wall near her front door, then mentally shook herself. She's been gone for two years already, she told herself. Most captors kill the kids they take within a day or two. Still, it was hard to imagine that she'd never see her only grandchild graduate or marry or have children of her own. Instead, Katie only smiled from her polished frame, fifteen forever.

While thinking these thoughts, the woman was absentmindedly leafing through the mail. There were a few bills to pay, a sailing magazine for her husband, who was away working as a captain on one of the lake's many charter boats, a postcard from a friend vacationing in Florida, and…wait. It couldn't be. But there was no mistaking Katie's hasty scrawl, letters crammed tightly together, just a shade too large, and formed with little regard to straight lines. She'd pressed the pen so hard into the envelope that the letters were impressed upon the cheap paper. Nevertheless, the grandmother's name, Naomi Bartlett, was legible there. But there was no return address, just an international stamp in one corner, and a smudged postmark.

Eagerly, without even thinking of waiting for her husband of 60 years to get home so they could read it together, or of calling Katie's parents (who, she thought bitterly, never seemed to care about their daughter- after all, SHE, not her parents, first reported Katie missing,) Naomi opened the letter, only just managing not to tear the front of the envelope in the process.

After two years, it seemed, there wasn't much to say. In the envelope was only one page, like from a legal pad, and a tiny photo. Naomi looked at the photo first, feeling like all the breath had been knocked out of her body.

It was Katie. She was clearly older now, 17 probably. But what struck the grandmother was how happy she looked, how there was an air of ease and confidence about her that there had never been before in her life- she'd always seemed nervous, under pressure, never really free. Her hair was a different color, dyed a light brown shot through with glints of honey, and was a few inches shorter, and she was wearing an earring in the cartilage of her ear. She was standing on a small beach, the sky behind her mostly blue, with mist higher up, concealing hills or maybe even mountains.

Naomi must have stared at that photo for several solid minutes, then tore herself away from it to read the letter, picking up the single sheet with shaking hands, gripping it quite hard despite her arthritis.

Dear Grandma,

I'm sending you this letter to let you know I'm alive, and I'm okay. I didn't run away. Don't think that. I couldn't leave you alone, so I'd never have run, but I had no choice but to go. No one's hurt me, so don't go looking for those that took me. If you want me to be happy and to have this life I've built for myself, don't call the police. Don't look for me yourself either. Maybe one day we'll run into each other somewhere, or I'll be able to call you. I can keep sending you letters as long as you keep this quiet- just between you and Grandpa, okay? I love you guys. That's the important part. And nothing could keep me from getting in touch with you forever. (: I'll write again as soon as I can. Don't try to contact me, though.

Love, Katie

The letter looked and sounded like her Katie, but what if her captors only made her say she was all right? There was no way to tell how much she had suffered, or was suffering right at this moment. And, more than anything, she wanted her back, no matter what she had to do.

The afternoon of the next day, Wednesday, was a slow one at the BAU. JJ was flicking through briefs and casefiles, trying to decide what the team should handle next, when she came across an interesting one. The police department in Bayfield, a tiny Lake Superior town, had gotten a call from a woman whose granddaughter, Katie Peltier, 15, had been missing for two years. That she was missing was nothing unusual; so many teenagers ran away, or were kidnapped, or just disappeared. But here was the unusual part. The woman had just gotten a letter, one sent from another country altogether, from Katie. The police had no doubt that the letter was authentic, having compared handwriting samples and found one, just one, fingerprint on the paper, but one that perfectly matched Katie's prints in the missing persons database.

JJ liked these cases the best- where people could be freed, could be found again. And she was sure that police in a town of 650 could use all the help they could get.

An hour later, she and the team were on the plane as it flew west towards this tiny outpost on the edge of the cold, glittering blue jewel. JJ had just finished briefing everyone. "Reid, take a look at the psycholinguistics of the letter," Hotchner said. "What does that tell us about the unsub?"

"Unsubs, actually," Reid corrected him. "She says "those that took me. Two, or more, unsubs obviously mean a different dynamic for her."

"Multiple unsubs mean an increased amount of time spent with the victim. That means they're much more likely to hang onto her longer, which it seems they have," Rossi put in.

Just then, Skype started calling the laptop on the table in the middle of the cabin; Morgan picked up. It was Garcia, who had been analyzing the photo. "The fount of ultimate knowledge says, there's no way this photo could have been faked. And that that is definitely Katie. I ran this picture against a picture of her that her grandmother gave us right after she went missing, used the age progression software a bit…and it's a match. I also looked through the records to dig up anything about her or her family, and…well, I find it surprising that Katie didn't run away even before she was kidnapped."

"Was she being abused?" Prentiss asked.

Garcia sighed. "No one was hitting her or molesting her or anything, but her parents have been charged with neglect twice, and in reports, neighbors said that they often heard her getting screamed at, and that she seemed unhappy. It seems like her parents basically let her live in the house and kept her from starving, but didn't do anything else. Despite all of this, she was a really good student- never got in trouble, 4.0 GPA freshman year of high school, and she worked at the city library, too. But…hmm, says here that during February of that year, she was referred to the school counselor because her English teacher saw that she was cutting herself. But they never really followed up on that, especially because her parents apparently didn't care about her enough to."

Reid wasn't paying attention- he was still scrutinizing the copy of the letter. "It sounds like she's got Stockholm syndrome. She says "if you want me to be happy and to have this life I've built for myself, don't call the police."" He took a good look at the photo Katie had sent, really looked, and recognized the background. And what if Katie wasn't being forced to lie in the letter? What if she really did like her life? He put together the details quickly in his head, and when he came to their conclusion, he wanted to jump off the plane, to stop the investigation right then and there.

What if Katie was an "Alliance child?" Like he himself had been? If she was, then "freeing" her might actually be worse for her life, and would undoubtedly result in many innocent deaths.


	2. Reid's Dilemma

**(A/N: Nazism is a serious issue, not something to make light of, and I don't mean to do so by writing about it. When dealing with things and people like this, the best weapon is an open mind. ****)**

Reid remembered that day as clearly as if it were yesterday; remembered it even more clearly than he remembered most things, given his eidetic memory. He knew he held the key to the whole investigation- he could see everything now, as clearly as a script. But if he were to tell the team about what had happened to him, share what he really thought about the case- the "Weisse Macht" would win. The name meant "white power" in German. Even though Nazism, both as an official party and as, Europe thought, an idea, had been banned, an ideology could never be killed. There were still millions of neo-Nazis out there, everywhere in the world. Around 2000, these groups had begun to organize themselves into one- to work together, and their leadership wasn't content with just committing hate crimes or driving people out of white areas. They were now out to kill. Nothing more, nothing less than Hitler's master race program, done by killing one undesirable at a time. And the operatives of the Weisse Macht never gave up on their assigned "target," usually a child so it could be killed before it could reproduce, until that person was dead, or the agents were.

Spencer had been one of these. His mother might have been schizophrenic, but at least some of the time, her paranoia had been justified; people really had been out to get her. Mental illness couldn't exist in the new master race that this scum was trying to build. She had to be eliminated. At least in the sanitarium now, his mother would be safe. But he wasn't. As her progeny, her genetic material, according to the Weisse Macht, he was just as bad as she was- if there was something wrong with the bitch, this group thought, then the pup would undoubtedly be the same way. Bad blood.

Spencer always kept his gun on him, even when he slept. He'd never been more than two feet away from his gun since he was ten- even then, he knew, they taught him, that they had to protect himself. Without their help, the Nazis would have killed him years ago.

Reid closed his eyes, the memory forcing itself back into his head on its own. He was nine, and his father had already left them. He did his best to help his mom and to keep up appearances, but she was falling apart more and more every day. It was spring, a rainy night, the smell of wet leaves and grass coming through his open window. He had gotten his mom to go to bed for the night, and now he could finally sleep himself. He reached over to his dresser and changed into his pajamas in the dark, then turned to lie down on his bed. But he never got to sleep there again.

"Reid Spencer. You have to come with me. And keep quiet. I have a gun." The tall, intimidating form didn't come in through the window like most child snatchers, the child Reid thought, panicked. Instead, he was already in the room; he had been hiding in the closet. How did the man know his name? Now there was something cold and metallic jabbed into his back, and the man was forcing him out the window, making him leave.

"But my mom…she needs me, she's sick," Reid whispered, pleading.

"Your mum will be fine," the man said almost-kindly; he had a slight British accent. "She'll go somewhere safe, and so will you."

And he had, though the young Reid Spencer (now renamed Spencer Reid, to protect his identity,) had resisted the protection at first. He'd been taken to England for about two weeks, then to headquarters, where he had found out what was really going on. There, he had learned about the Nazi threat, that he was considered vermin because of his mother's illness. These people, the organization called the Alliance, had to protect him. And they used guerilla tactics, yes, and some things were illegal, but the police were just not doing enough here. It was war in every sense of the word; every day that he lived with these people, he was reminded of things he had read about the Holocaust, about how Jewish children had been hidden for their own protection- this was that, sixty-some years later.

Not that he spent those eight and a half years until he turned eighteen cowering in an attic or basement. Reid had been quite safe at headquarters in Switzerland, a vast underground warren of living spaces for the children and their guards, of which there were already fifty or so at the time, plus massive stockpiles of food, weapons, and every kind of equipment they could possibly need. Reid Spencer grew up here, learned how to shoot a gun, how to hack into computers and all sorts of systems, and even got an education. It was here that he became Spencer Reid with the help of forged documents.

When he was 16, he had gotten into Oxford by a combination of test scores, glowing recommendations, impressing the right people, and another forged document or two. He had to be on his own from that point- obviously, his guardians at the Alliance couldn't go with him to university and shadow his every step. He hoped to blend in, to be somebody else.

Oxford was great for him- Reid had sped through his undergraduate program and went on to get two Ph.D's by the time he was twenty. Here, Reid thought that he'd finally shaken off his pursuers, that they wouldn't find him here, but he still scanned every person in crowds, never really trusted anyone, and always hung on to his Sig Sauer, either jammed into his belt or in a special pocket in his backpack.

It was because of these things, because of the life he had been given, that he just could not investigate this case. If Katie was found, he was sure that the Weisse Macht would kill her as soon as they realized she was alive, which was inevitable with all the publicity that this case would generate. And if the whole Alliance was exposed- well, multiply what would happen to Katie by several hundred.

In Switzerland, in her small underground room, Hannah Michaels sat on her bed and cleaned her gun, the now-faint scars on her arms seeming to move as her hands did. She'd written another letter to her grandma, which was carefully hidden under the mattress. Like the first letter, it didn't say much- she was petrified that she'd inadvertently give away a clue about her whereabouts and so cause her protectors, all of this, to be lost when they were jailed. She could probably protect herself by now, but what about the others? Some were too young, some were disabled, some didn't yet have all of the vital documents for normal life in Europe. But she had to let her grandparents know that she was alive, that she loved them.

The smell of cooking breakfast wafted from the main room into her bedroom; a tall, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, one of her guardians, knocked on her door. "Breakfast's ready, Katie. Oh, and I spoke with Aleksey earlier this morning. He should be back from his mission on Saturday." The girl had two guardians, not one like most people, probably because she was "higher-risk" in security terms, one or the other of them was gone much of the time, and anyway, Aleksey and the woman, Anna, were engaged. Of course they'd want to work together.

"Reid. Come on, Spencer. Are you asleep?" Prentiss nudged him.

"No," Reid mumbled. "Just thinking."


	3. The Investigation Begins

**(A/N: Review please! :P The places mentioned here are real, though some details may be fictionalized. I vacation in Bayfield, actually. You all should go there, it's great for sailing, kayak/canoeing, and sightseeing. Okay, commercial plug over. :D Please tell me if there are any inaccurate details about anything, from the profile, the team, or anything.)**

The team had just landed in Bayfield- there was no airport there, so the plane landed with a significant jolt in a clearing in the forest that sloped down to the lake, upsetting Reid and Prentiss's chess board. Two aging Range Rovers and a large black Expedition with a kayak still strapped to the roof, plus the town's two police cars, waited on the nearby road.

"Thank you for coming out. I think the town's pretty nervous- it's not too often that this sort of case, or anything, really, happens up here. And people need to know that this town is safe- we sink or swim on tourism here. Let's keep this quiet, all right?" the sheriff explained.

"We'll do our best," JJ promised. "If you'll take us to your command center, we can get started right away."

The sheriff, a nervous-looking man in his late fifties, with his name, Jeff Bodin, on his badge, shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Well, Agent-"

"Jeraeu" she supplied.

"There's only myself and my deputy here- we're the whole police department. So our command center is just a tiny building with two desks and our equipment. But I've arranged for you to get space in the city hall across the street from us, so you can have more room to start taking care of things." JJ sighed inwardly, and felt glad that Garcia could do all her work from their office back in DC. This was Alaska all over again. Let's just hope that the Internet reception was better here.

Twenty minutes later, the team was set up in the town's only meeting hall- there was no available technology except for fingerprinting, although the original copy of the envelope had now been sent across the lake to a lab in Duluth for DNA testing, and results, if there were any, would likely come in tomorrow afternoon. And their familiar glass board on which to write out ideas was something that no one in this town had never seen- an old whiteboard, and sheets of butcher paper on one wall, would have to do. Right after the arrival of the team, several people all showed up at once- a man and woman in their late seventies who had to be Katie's grandparents, a harried-looking middle-aged woman, a nervous girl only a few years older than Katie, another woman in her midthirties, a taciturn Native American man, and a reporter and cameraman. It transpired that they were Katie's grandparents, a woman who managed several shops in town and who was worried that having the FBI around and the town worried would scare tourists, and thus her livelihood, away, a tribal leader from the Indian reservation who was wondering about the safety of his people, Katie's former English teacher, and a girl who was a barista at the coffee shop that Katie had always gone to before she went missing. Hotch quickly formulated a plan.

"I'll talk to the grandfather. Rossi, you can talk to the grandmother. Morgan, take the English teacher, and Prentiss, talk to the barista. Get them to tell us about her life, what she was like, and who would have wanted to do this to her. And Jereau, you handle the rest- make a statement for the press and the people who are worried. Reid, you start exercising your genius in finding out more about the unsub."

Each of the agents doing interviews left the one large room to talk with the people who had known, no, wait, knew, Katie. Rossi sat with the grandmother in the sheriff's office, and Hotch spoke to the grandfather in the empty office of the sailing charter company he worked for. Morgan and the teacher moved to the teacher's boat at the nearby docks, talking as they bobbed up and down in the temporarily-still water. Prentiss and the barista got perhaps the best location of all the agents; they sat down on the couches in the back of the mostly-empty coffeeshop, being as all the customers were out on the patio, enjoying the evening. Prentiss immediately noted the large windows along the whole front of the shop. These gave an excellent view of the main street of the town, plus the city dock and a sliver of the lake. Perfect place for an unsub to watch, to look for a victim, the agent thought involuntarily.

"Should I get you some coffee, Agent Prentiss?" the girl asked. She didn't look at her, and was kicking the toe of one battered Converse sneaker with the other. Just nervous, or guilty? What did she know?

"Call me Emily, if you like. And thanks, I would like some." Once she and the girl both had cups of coffee strong enough to sit up and bark in front of them, she seemed ready to talk.

"You know, my name's Emily too. Emily Rice. Anyway, Katie had been coming into this coffee shop since before I started working here. I think I remember her being here when she was twelve, even. She'd just come here after school or work at the library and do homework or read. She always drank chai tea, usually with a shot of peppermint syrup. After she started working the summer before starting high school, she was here every day that we were open," the girl began, brushing the bangs of her short pink hair out of her eyes.

"Every day, really? You didn't find that unusual?" Prentiss wondered.

Emily sighed and lowered her voice. "She was having problems at home, at least that's what she said when I asked her why she was always here. And that's what the town gossip mill churned out. At least her grandparents cared about her."

"Problems at home?" Obviously Prentiss already knew that, but she wanted to get a take on how things were from someone who actually knew Katie.

"I never saw her with bruises or anything, but she usually looked so sad that I knew there was something wrong. Back in April, about a month and a half before she…disappeared, um…was kidnapped, I mean, her mom came here and found her. She needed to come home for some reason- I think she was in trouble for…it might have even been nothing, it never seemed like they were happy with her. Anyway, so her mom came in and yelled at her in front of all the customers until my manager made her leave. And then one day she was paying and I saw some cuts on her arm. That's about all I can "report" on her. She was pretty quiet."

"But you wouldn't have come to talk to us unless you knew something important, Emily," Prentiss pried. "Did she come here the day she was taken? Did you ever see anyone with her, or talking to her, or paying more attention to her than they should have?"

The girl nodded, her pink hair flopping into her face again. "Of course she came here. She never brought anyone with her, but…"

"What?" Prentiss asked. "Emily, if you know something, you have to tell us."

"I know. This lady just never seemed the type to hurt anyone, if she hurt Katie, then I'm the Easter bunny."

"Tell me about her."

"About two weeks before Katie was kidnapped, this woman started hanging around the shop. She'd always be around when Katie came in, just sitting right over there-" Emily pointed at the part of the couch next to the agent. "She bought Katie her tea a couple of times, and they talked. Just about normal things, like how she was doing, and about school and stuff."

"What did she look like? How did she act, was there anything distinctive about her?"

"She was tall, about your height, actually she looked rather like you, but her hair was a little longer and her eyes were green. I thought she was one of those techie types who could work from anywhere, because she always had a laptop with her. I know she wasn't from around here. Her English was perfect, but she had an accent, and a few times, she talked on her phone, in another language. She always got a large soy caramel latte. I just can't seem to think of her as a bad person, though."

Prentiss asked a few more questions, but Emily didn't know much more than that, so she finished her coffee and met the rest of the team back at the city hall. "Did any of you get anything?"

It turned out there wasn't much more information to be had. Katie's grandparents had given some information about her and her parents, who to the team's general puzzlement and disgust, hadn't yet had a single thing to do with her case. The teacher had added a bit to their picture of Katie; she was highly creative, but seemed to have a lot of problems, but, like the others, was clueless as to who could have taken her. Prentiss explained what the barista had told her, and Spencer, after much thought, came up with something. "What if the two unsubs were a couple? A woman to get Katie to trust her, and, later, to help take care of the captive, and a man to do the actual snatch. If you'll excuse me for just a second, I'll be right back."

"What's that important?" Rossi asked.

"Er, I need to go to the bathroom." Reid said sheepishly. "That's all."

Reid did go there, but not for the intended purpose. He had just gotten a text back on his other cell phone, a tiny, prepaid satellite one that none of the team knew he had. While they had left him alone to work on the profile, he'd texted his former guardians at the Alliance- if the BAU was really going to investigate this matter seriously, then he needed to warn all those people, because if events kept going this way, Katie and her stupid letter would land the FBI and Interpol right at headquarters.

Now they had texted him back.

How do you know? How much time do you think we have until you guys get at headquarters?

Fingers shaking, he pecked out:

One of the Alliance children contacted her family. A letter. They called the police, who called us. A few days, at least, provided she doesn't make further contact.

At that same moment, on a cool, clear Swiss morning, Katie Peltier, aka Hannah Michaels, walked into the tiny town near headquarters, with a complicit but reluctant boyfriend in tow. Surely her grandmother hadn't called the police. Her next letter didn't need to be smuggled over to England, then sent so that the postmark wouldn't reveal anything. Who looked at postmarks, or any letters, in these electronic days?HoH b to


	4. The Unsubs, Again

**(A/N: Sorry about the late update, but it was storming when I wanted to upload this chapter, so our house WiFi was turned off, which I think is pretty dumb, but my dad wouldn't budge. By the way, a marine radio is like a cross between a CB radio, like in trucks, and a walkie-talkie. There's one on every boat and in many places people like to camp and be on the water. Enjoy and please review!)**

"Guys, it's 11 p.m and we've been staring at the same information for five hours since we got here. Let's go get some sleep and come back to this tomorrow morning," JJ urged her team. "Garcia will still be working on stuff for us."

Reluctantly, the tired team left their respective work and drove the short distance to the small hotel where they were staying- actually, it was just three double rooms, the tourists having filled many other places before all _this_ went down.

Meanwhile, a twelve-year-old boy, half Ojibwe, half white, walked back to his family's campsite after looking at the stars on the beach at Devils Island, the northernmost of the islands that Bayfield served as a gateway to. He knew that a girl had been taken from the town two years ago, but he never worried about that- he could take care of himself. Besides, who would come all the way out here, twenty-odd miles through the lake, accessible only by small boat, with no real places even to anchor, to take him? He admired the scene before him one last time. For once, the lake was calm- usually, this exposed northern tip of the island was constantly battered by its fury, and the moon was full overhead, making the water glow like molten silver. He sighed and headed into the woods, but never made it home that night.

Before he could react, someone, or something- he thought wildly of the bears that lived in the islands, though he knew there were none here- had grabbed him, putting him in a headlock. And he felt icy metal on the exposed, soft skin of his neck, a quarter-inch or less above his arteries, his pulse. "Please…don't…God…I…" he begged incoherently.

"Jacob Silescu, you are going to listen, and do what I say," a voice whispered in his ear, sounding sure and confident, but accented, tripping over his French-sounding last name. "Keep quiet. Don't fight or I'll cut you." The man forced him to walk back out on the beach and lie down on one of the many large rock slabs that dotted it. "Now turn over. Hold still." The boy, expecting the worst, was dimly surprised when all he felt was something stinging his neck, then nothing at all.

Aleksey lifted the now-limp body carefully over his shoulder, then walked quickly towards one of the largest of the island's many sea caves, careful to walk through the trees and brush lining the beach than the openness of the sand and rock. A small, low-slung speedboat, like one a drug runner would use, he always thought, started its motor in the lowest gear and steered carefully to a spot where the land dropped off into the water, then idled there. "Bayfield's crawling with feds, are you sure we had to do this now? Couldn't it have waited until after this investigation died down a little?" the woman driving protested.

Aleksey grit his teeth. "Sure, we could have waited, if you want the Weisse Macht to kill this "abomination." I'm serious, they were on his tail, this absolutely could not wait another day. Besides, the feds…it's the town they're watching closely, not the islands. The park rangers don't even carry guns, and no one's going to look at every single pleasure boat coming and going. Now how are we going to do this? It's a bigger drop than I thought and I don't want to drop him." The woman thought for a moment, then found some rope and tossed it up.

"Thanks Caz," Aleksey mumbled.

"You tie it around his waist and slowly lower him to the boat. I'll catch him…god, this is bloody crazy, not to mention the most logistically difficult taking I've ever done!" she complained But they worked it out, and were soon speeding across a vast expanse of open lake. In the cold, windy hour and a half trip, Jacob woke up again, but seeing that he couldn't see land in any direction, decided it was best not to fight. But still, just before the party arrived in sleepy Grand Marais, where Caz and Jacob would catch their flight to England and Aleksey would hopefully continue on to the Alliance headquarters back in Switzerland where he would see Anna and Katie again, another needle went into the boy's carotid artery. It was just easier this way. And he would learn soon enough that all this was for his own protection, that they weren't the bad ones here.

They met their driver at the dock jutting out from his lake property. "Watch the boat for us, will you? Get it back to our guy in Thunder Bay, it's his after all," Caz asked the man. He nodded. After a twenty-minute drive, everyone came to a small airfield where one of the organization's two private planes were waiting. Everything was arranged.

Jacob's mother got up at five in the morning to watch the sun rise. She opened the flap of her son's tent, thinking that he might want to share this sight with her. But he wasn't there. She called and called through the forest and caves, but he was just…gone.

At that point, Jacob was already out high over the Atlantic.

The team yawned and stretched and drank coffee (or, in Spencer's case, sugar with a little coffee in it,) as they looked at the case again at 6:30 that morning. Within seconds, the sheriff came running in. "You guys have to hear this." They hurried to the police station, where a crude marine radio was perched on top of the sheriff's desk. The sheriff picked up the mike. "Okay, the FBI are here, tell them what happened."

"Is this still working? My son's missing, he's only twelve! His name is Jacob!" the woman said frantically.

Morgan took the mike. "Okay ma'am. Please try to calm down, tell us your name too, and where you are and how this happened."

"My name's April Silescu. I was out camping on Devils Island with my husband and son. I looked in Jacob's tent around five this morning and he just wasn't there! Charlie and I have searched the whole island, but he's just…gone…"

Now there was only silence, and muffled crying.

"Looks like our unsubs may have struck again," Hotchner said, quietly enough so the woman on the other end couldn't hear him.

"Well…you never know until you see the crime scene," Reid hedged.

"The unsubs are organized and smart. They knew we were around, why did they take another victim now, especially considering the long period where nothing happened?" Prentiss thought aloud.

"Maybe they felt they had to." Rossi suggested. "For some psychological reason, or maybe a compulsion. Like with that girl who set all those fires at the college in Arizona, or the gypsies we dealt with before."

"Or maybe they just wanted to let us know they were here. That we can't stop them," Reid said absently.

Just then, Garcia called Morgan's laptop. "Okay sweetcheeks, since most, if not all, criminals we profile are repeat offenders, even given these unsub's long cooling-off periods, I, of course, dug into the past. I looked up records of missing children between the ages of 10 and 16 whose bodies had never been found; I went back five years. There were a few cases in the state, but they didn't fit our guys' MO and thus can be ruled out. So I first expanded the search to include Minnesota, Michigan, and Canada in areas near Lake Superior. And boom! One other case with no recovery, and similar circumstances. Up in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Then I expanded the search nationwide and…there have been fifty cases like Katie's just over the past five years. Our unsubs couldn't be responsible for taking all those kids, especially if they're not killing them, but still, even a tenth that many captive kids would be hard to handle, I-"

"What if they were?" Morgan interrupted. "Responsible."

"Then I'd say we were dealing with a whole network of unsubs here. That this is far bigger than we thought." Hotch pieced together.

"As I was going to say before you cut me off, I'm going to look at any and all travel records that might coincide somehow with the times of the abductions. It's a long shot, as most captors drive, but someone might have gone over a border or rented a car or something. I'll get back to you in a few," Garcia said.


	5. Of Genius, Crime Scenes, and Sauce

**(A/N: Sorry for the delay, but I go away on the weekends, and Friday was one of my not-that-great days, so I didn't update, sorry! Will try to keep this up.)**

Garcia contacted the team not even five minutes after beginning her search on travel immediately after the abductions, this time calling Morgan on his cell phone. "Hey baby girl," he answered after just one ring. "What have you got for us?" He turned on the speakerphone so the whole team could hear; clearly, by her excited greeting, she had found something good.

"I didn't think I'd find much in the way as to records telling us how and where the unsubs might have taken the victims, but I ran the search anyway thinking that some of them had to cross a border or something eventually. And I hit the jackpot. Even your top police units probably wouldn't have picked up on this pattern, and if I'm right, the unsubs maintained that same organized, logistical approach when transporting the victims- this fits the M.O. What I did, just as a long shot, because most unsubs wouldn't have these kinds of resources or be skilled enough to pull this off, but because Hotch said that we may be dealing with a whole network of them here, was to search all airports within a hundred-mile radius of where the victims were taken. And I found this- a clear pattern of private flights leaving those places, usually tiny regional airports, within a few hours of the victims' being taken."

Hotchner didn't believe Garcia for a few seconds- clearly, this unsub was a very unusual breed, if she was right. However, this also meant a clearer profile, and it would be easier to catch them, he hoped. "So they're flying the victims out and going- where?" he barked.

"Various locations, sir, but all of them in Europe, and again, utilizing smaller airports where there are fewer people around."

"How the hell- excuse me- are they clearing customs?" Prentiss asked. "And then there's the whole issue of documents for the victims, especially if they are being kept alive for quite some time as Katie's case suggests.

"I don't know- the records only state that each plane did clear customs with no problems. And there's no record of the victims' being on the flights. However, each flight did carry two people officially, usually a man and a woman in their late twenties to early thirties- old enough to be organized and efficient in abducting, but young enough to still be in excellent physical shape. This seemed to fit what we have of a profile so far, and the pattern and timing was just too clear for the two events not to be related. I'll be looking into the whole documents issue- with this level of organization and resources available, these unsubs must be using some form of faked or forged identities, and I'll see if I can find any information that suggests the unsubs have any locations in common. There's something about the victimology, though, in this case- I know there's a pattern somewhere, I just can't find it. Out of fifty-three victims, twenty-seven are minorities, eleven are biracial, four have disabilities, one was transgender, and the last thirteen either had a chronic health problem, or they or one or both of their parents suffered from mental illness. Also, seven of the victims, in addition to these circumstances, were gay, lesbian, or bisexual." Garcia explained, barely pausing for breath.

Due to how personal this case was, to the consequences he knew would take place if the FBI were to bring down the Alliance, Reid was trying to help the investigation as little as possible, but his genius brain couldn't help but point out the obvious fact here. "Garcia, all of these victims are _different_ somehow. Some people might think that these differences diminish them."

"You're right as always, boy genius," she said sweetly and hung up.

Reid's stomach churned unpleasantly. His team, especially Garcia, were so good at their jobs that it was inconceivable to think that they'd never be able to track the Alliance down. And the next thing Garcia's search would net would be…where all the "Alliance children" were ending up. He could just see the scene- Interpol and the FBI busting down the entrance into their underground world, killing or jailing the protectors, and liberating the children. Liberating them to be killed by the Weisse Macht. Without even pausing to think much, or to hide his other cell phone from the team, he yanked it out and tapped out….You have to leave headquarters. All of you. FBI closing in. Two days, maybe. Evacuate the kids, don't leave any evidence.

But at that same moment, Reid's former protector swore loudly as he fished his phone out of the spaghetti sauce he was making. He was sure that the food would taste okay, still, but his phone, his lifeline, was now ruined. His phone vibrated with an incoming text, but there was no way he could read it.

The sheriff walked quickly back into the city hall building where the team was working. "Okay, I'm done interviewing Jacob's parents. The Coast Guard is ready to take us to the crime scene now."

Twenty minutes later, the team was fighting their way through a thick tangle of scrub and small trees towards the beach where Jacob's mother thought he'd been taken. She was right- here, there were two sets of tracks on the sand, a smaller pair, plus a men's size twelve bootprint. They began to figure things out, and when the sun blazed overhead, they thought they had a handle on how things had been done.

"Okay, so I'm the unsub, the one whose job it is to do the actual snatch. I stand over there-" Hotchner gestured towards the clump of trees near the sand, exactly where Aleksey had stood. "-and I have an unobstructed view of the beach and am close to the path. And if it's dark and I'm quiet, Jacob doesn't see me. Now, he walks right by me on this path just here. I grab him, flash a gun or knife to force compliance- if he'd screamed, his mom would have heard him. Then I force him onto this rock and make him lie down so I can restrain him somehow, then I…Reid and the team followed the larger footprints up the beach and through part of the woods where the ground grew rockier, where there were caves and drop-offs.

"I must be carrying him at this point, because I don't see his footprints." Morgan cut in.

"Exactly," Hotch continued. "So I'm carrying Jacob- I must be pretty strong. We get to that small cliff right there by the big cave and- what?"

Prentiss surveyed the cave and the drop critically. "My accomplice, who's hidden a boat in the cave up until now, pulls the boat right around to there- the water looks deep enough- and I somehow clamber down or lower myself and Jacob into the boat, all without dropping him."

"That fits," the sheriff said slowly. "Jacob's mom said she thought she heard a boat motor start near here late last night."

"And now the question is, where do we go from here?" Rossi asked the group at large. They couldn't answer that question.

**Sorry this chapter was a little boring, I promise there will be some action soon! Thanks to everyone who favorited me/added me to their story alerts/reviewed. :)**


	6. The Profile, and Garcia's Discovery

"We go, as always, to Garcia's genius," Morgan answered after a minute of thought. "There aren't any airports in the Bayfield area, but…" he stared out into the vast, open lake before them.

"Sheriff Bodin, what cities are reachable by boat within a few hours of this island?" Prentiss asked.

"Well," he said slowly, scratching at his chin. "Grand Marais is across the lake, almost directly north of here, and Duluth is a bit of a longer trip. And if these criminals were up to crossing borders and had a lot of fuel, they could have gone to…I think Thunder Bay is the only place on the Canadian side with smaller airports like these…un-subs have been using. Duluth is kind of risky though- it's the biggest city on this lake."

"So if I were going to abduct a child, that's not the ideal place. Too many potential witnesses," Hotchner concluded. He turned to Morgan. "Call Garcia and have her check for private flights out of airports near Grand Marais- if the pattern holds true, there will have been a late-night or early-morning plane that left today. And let's get back. This scene didn't give us much- the unsubs were too careful. Besides, Reid should be finishing the profile by now, and we can deliver it in time for the six o' clock news."

But Reid wasn't working on the profile. Instead, he anxiously paced the empty city hall- he'd already tried calling Axel, his contact at the Alliance, five times, not caring about the long distance charges or the work he was leaving undone. He knew of no one else to call- after the children left, contact was curtailed to prevent either the Weisse Macht or Interpol from getting any information on other people involved with their organization.

Jacob was pacing, too, the pale wooden boards in the old house creaking under his quick tread. He remembered the man who had grabbed him, and how he and a woman had flown him over to here, wherever that was. It had been a long flight, and he was sure that there was a significant time difference even though he'd been knocked out again upon landing and he didn't know for how long. He wasn't tied up, obviously, but the door was….there was no door, and no windows either. The rooms he was in seemed to have been remodeled for the sole purpose of keeping captives; he guessed that this was once an attic that was now converted into a bedroom and a tiny bathroom. The drugs used to knock him out, plus jet lag and overall confusion, made it impossible for Jacob to plot an escape. Instead, he just walked back and forth, measuring the walls of his cage with his feet, like a tiger in the zoo. He wondered about his parents, and how anyone could get up here at all in the first place, and whether his captors were going to come in soon. He hated himself for it, but he almost hoped they would- the woman had been almost kind, and besides, he was starving. At the same time, he watched the news and crime shows. He knew what would happen to someone like him upon being kidnapped- he physically recoiled from this thought, and his hunger stopped altogether. Perhaps they would kill him quickly.

He had stopped moving for two seconds, so he heard the footsteps on the floor beneath him, then jumped in surprise as a whole flight of stairs detached itself from a patch of wall near where he had just been. Then there was a thud, and a female voice muttering, "bloody hell, I'm so clumsy…" Upon sticking his head through the opening to the lower floor that had just been made, he saw the woman, Caz, hopping around on one foot. Maybe he could overpower her now…but he just didn't seem to have it in him. After another minute or so of jumping about comically and swearing, she limped up towards him, carrying dinner for both of them.

"Hi Jacob. Are you hungry, love? I'm not going to hurt you." Caz set the trays down on a worn table in the far corner of the room so that she could remove her gun from its holster on her belt and carefully place it on the floor. Jacob knew he could, knew he should, grab the weapon right then and make her take him home, but he was too dazed by this display of caring by someone who was supposed to enjoy torture and death to make his move. "We'll eat and I'll tell you why you're here. You'll see that we're not the evil ones in this situation."

Meanwhile, Garcia stared fixedly at her main monitor, unable to believe her eyes, or rather, her mind, feeling as if all the breath had been knocked out of her. It couldn't be. There had to be some coincidence. She knew that her cyber-genius, her ability to track down and synthesize even the smallest bits of information into a coherent whole, often brought people negative consequences, but those usually only affected the unsubs. She never expected a case to become this personal. Garcia had looked back further, back fifteen or even twenty years, to see if she found any more records of abductions with similar circumstances to the more recent ones she had uncovered, but had stopped her work cold when she saw the name on the police report.

Reid Spencer. Age nine. He'd been taken on May 3rd, 2005 from his mother's home in Las Vegas sometime during the night- the investigators guessed sometime between 11 pm and 2 am. He was never seen or heard from again, as far as they knew, and the report noted that his mother had schizophrenia but was eliminated as a suspect. The crime scene, like the one the rest of the team sans Reid was looking at now, yielded almost no clues. Although there was no pattern of a private flight leaving that night or early the next morning, Garcia was sure this was the same type of case. She thought back to what she knew, that this could very well be an entire network of kidnappers.

But the picture said it all. The attached photo showed a serious, worried-looking, somewhat undersized young boy with messy brown hair, the bangs of which flopped adorably into his eyes. It was the eyes. It was all the eyes. They were Agent Spencer Reid's, all right.

Garcia continued her frentic search for more information, telling herself to calm down. Her search for documentation on the other kidnappings, either of the children or the unsubs, hadn't turned up a lot- there must have been a lot of forging going on. So where does one look if one wants to find a boy genius? Schools, of course, she thought to herself. The young agent had said that he went to Oxford University when he was 16. After only a minute or two of expert hacking, Garcia had found him. Spencer Reid had enrolled at Oxford in the fall of 2012, yet there was no birth certificate for him, nothing attesting to his existence up to that point except for a passport he had obtained literally just a few weeks before beginning school. Then he had used that one piece of real documentation, no doubt supported by fakes, to obtain all the other real pieces needed to pass the FBI's background check. Garcia couldn't believe the FBI had been fooled, and besides…Reid Spencer, Spencer Reid…it was so simple.

But if the team, if anyone found out about Reid, his world would come crashing down around him. He would lose his job, his life as he knew it, and the team, the closest thing he had to a family. Garcia put her head down on her desk, exhausted by so many unanswered questions. It was clear that the same network of unsubs who were taking kids now had taken Reid, but why? And why had they let him out into the world again? Why was he able to go to college, get this job, and live out a normal life rather than cowering in some dark basement? How might Reid have suffered? Did he escape? Or…what if all this had nothing to do with white supremacy or human trafficking, as the team suspected, but was rather a sort of protective custody? She would talk to Reid, but she would hold off on telling the team about what she knew, at least for now. She couldn't rip Reid out of this life he'd made.

An hour later, JJ had the media and police rounded up, and she and Hotchner were giving the profile. "We're looking for multiple kidnappers in this case. The unsubs, or unidentified subjects, are a man and a woman, white and in their late twenties to early thirties. They may be European. These unsubs are organized, methodical, have access to a great deal of material resources, and are in excellent physical shape. They tend to snatch youth between the ages of 10 and 16 who are different in some way, whether that means racially, or by virtue of sexual orientation, disability, or illness, whether physical or mental," Hotchner began.

"While it is a distinct possibility that these unsubs are keeping the children they take for longer periods of time than most abductors, who generally kill their victims within the first few hours, that doesn't mean that it will be easy to track the children down again. The unsubs are highly intelligent and plan each aspect of the kidnap well before it takes place. Also, the unsubs are taking the children long distances, perhaps even flying with them. At this time, we can't pin down a definite motive for these crimes, but we believe that white supremacy and/or Nazism may be involved- hence the targeting of those who are different," JJ explained.

Reid stood quietly by, watching the chaos. His team was very wrong about that last part, but he was not about to correct them. And maybe if he could steer the investigation correctly, the FBI would go after the _real_ criminals here…He just hoped that they never found out about him.


	7. Nightmares and Futures

**(A/N: Sorry for the delay! I was on vacation, and wasn't really sure where to take the story from the end of Chapter 6.)**

Later that night, in the hotel room he shared with Morgan, Reid tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He glanced at the clock's red numbers on the nightstand- 3:12 a.m. Don't look, he told himself, or you'll never be able to sleep.

But then his phone buzzed insistently- his FBI one. Reid was sure the team was asleep. So who could be calling him at this time? The caller ID showed Garcia. Shit, he thought, she's come up with a huge new breakthrough, and now we'll end up going to Switzerland and…the Alliance children will die as soon as we free them. But he picked up anyway. "Hi Garcia," he whispered, not wanting to wake Morgan.

"Reid Spencer," she said softly. Reid's hands began to shake so much that he nearly dropped the phone. His stomach flipped unpleasantly, and he realized he was sweating, even though the room was a comfortable 68 degrees

"H-how did you, how did you know?" he stammered.

"Well, I am the fount of all knowledge, I can gain access to information no one else can. Are you alone? Go somewhere where you can be."

Reid slunk quietly down the stairs and out into the cool night- well, morning, technically- and sank down at the base of a large spruce tree in the small patch of grass outside the hotel. "Okay Garcia. It's not what you think- nothing is, there's no black and white here."

"I know, I think so, too, sugar," she said gently. "Based on the fact that Katie seems just fine in her letter, the unsubs keep the kids for a really long time, but there are no bodies or people in the hospital- and that you were apparently allowed to eventually leave them and make this life for yourself- I think this case is, well, different. But I want you to explain. Tell me what happened to you. Who are these unsubs, really? What are they trying to do? We obviously can't sabotage this case, but…"

So Reid did- he started with that night when he was nine, and what his mom was going through. "It's protective custody," he continued. "The threat's real. The team is on to something with the idea that the kidnappings had something to do with Nazism or white supremacy, but if the real criminals were the ones doing these kidnappings, you would have found a trail of bodies rather than one of missing children."

"The real criminals?"

"Look, Garcia," Reid sucked in a deep breath, trying to stop his voice from shaking. "These kidnappings- they prevent deaths rather than causing them. There are these incredibly organized international neo-Nazi groups, they were- I mean, still are- out to kill the children who've been kidnapped. The so-called "unsubs" actually doing these things, the reason we're here in the first place, are taking these children in order to protect them. I was one of those, you know. If this network of unsubs- they're called the Alliance- hadn't kidnapped me when I was little, I'd certainly be dead by now. These Nazis, the Weisse Macht, they're just killing kids, that's their sole focus, and they're very skilled at it. And if you knew that this was going on, wouldn't you do anything you could, legal or not, to stop them?"

Garcia sighed. "I just don't know where we should go from here. It's not like we can sabotage the investigation, and if what you're telling me is true, by freeing the kids through our investigation, we'd effectively be pulling the trigger on the gun that shot them, and disrupting so many lives- from what you said, and Katie, their lives are almost better with the Alliance. It's a hard puzzle to crack, but us two incredible geniuses just might be able to work something out."

Reid and Garcia finally got off the phone at 4:30, in those still predawn hours. Praying that Katie wouldn't contact her family again, that there would be no more leads, Reid snuck back to the room, but never actually slept, not even for a single minute.

Garcia faced her own dilemma here. She'd analyzed border crossings and travel patterns throughout Europe before finding out about Reid, and had found a clear pattern of crossings and visas obtained. The unsubs, or protectors, depending on what one believed, and, likely, the kids, as well, were holed up in Switzerland. And Garcia couldn't hinder the investigation- that would be a federal crime. As much as she hated herself for doing so, she'd have to lead the rest of the team to apprehending entirely the wrong people, assuming Reid was telling the truth.

Back at city hall at 7:30, the team arrived to go over clues to Jacob's disappearance. Almost immediately, Hotchner's phone rang. "Another letter…really? Okay." He hung up just as abruptly. Turning to face the rest of the team, he explained. "The mail processing facility in Ashland was told to keep an eye out for any letters that could be from Katie, as she said she might write to her grandmother again. Another one just came in three minutes ago, they're sending photos of it and rushing it to a lab." Everyone's phone then went off at once with the aforementioned photos of her letter. Reid's heart sank as he saw the postmark. Zurich, Switzerland. The Alliance headquarters lay not ten miles from there. Why couldn't Katie at least have been more careful? Why did the team end up investigating the very people who had saved him, when there were so many _real_ criminals out there?

"I guess we're going to Zurich," was all Hotchner said. "I'll speak with Interpol and local police there, and we should be flying in an hour or two."

Reid had to stop this train of clues. Had to work against his team, his family. At least Garcia was on his side.

Two hours later, as the plane sped across the sky, Reid finally fell into an uneasy sleep. Interpol and FBI agents, including his own team, all dressed in SWAT gear and brandishing rifles, were at the entrance to headquarters. One agent keyed in the entry code and disabled the surveillance camera with a single, well-placed shot. Then they kicked down the door. The speakers on the walls of the underground world Reid had lived in for so long were yelling coded commands- evacuate the children, guardians and others prepare to fight, but he knew it was too late. The group rounded a corner, and there were a dozen or more of the so-called "unsubs," along with a few of the Alliance children, frantically trying to make it to the hidden garage and run with them. None of them had had a chance to pick up any weapons other than the handguns everyone always carried here. And handguns, no matter how good, were no match for fifty agents with shields, bulletproof vests, and AK-47's.

The bloodbath seemed neverending.

Prentiss watched Reid struggle in his dream. Everyone on the team had nightmares, but for Reid they were worst, probably because he was so young. She shook him gently. "Reid, Reid, wake up. You're only having a nightmare."

But Reid knew this was no nightmare. Rather, it was the future that lay ahead for so many. He'd never be able to live with himself after this case.


	8. Michele

As the plane touched down on Swiss soil, Reid's hands started to shake, and he was overtaxing his genius brain to such an extent as he tried to find a solution to all this that he had a pounding headache. "Are you okay, Reid?" JJ asked. He forced himself to shrug and attempt a smile. "I guess. This is just a very strange case, and I worry about the children involved." That last part, at least, was true, but for entirely different reasons than the rest of the team thought. Reid shot Garcia a strained look. But neither of them could reveal the truth. He was so glad Garcia was with them now- the flight had stopped near BAU headquarters to get her, as the greater distance and time difference would make it more difficult for her to work well with the team otherwise.

The team's jet had landed on one of the smaller airstrips around the edge of the city's main airport. Someone else had flown in at that time too, and was now staring, puzzled, out the airport window at the plane there.

Michele Delacour, officially known as Aimee Carmichael, shifted her weight from foot to foot and played with the bangs of her dark pixie-cut hair as she examined the vehicle with growing apprehension. Not a normal commercial flight, and that wasn't one of the planes belonging to the Alliance- she would almost think it belonged to some rich mogul, come here to go skiing, except for the glaring fact that it was summer. She watched the people move out onto the airstrip, saw the badges glint in the sun and the police chief that had come to meet them. She wasn't sure who these people were, but she had to warn the Alliance. Inwardly, she sighed. Couldn't she ever have a peaceful life or a normal vacation? She'd only flown back in from Paris to see her guardians for a few days.

Like well-tuned clockwork, her "Alliance reflexes" sprang into action. One always had to assess threat levels, be ready for anything, and always stay alert. Michele made her decision- stay here, and try to listen in on anything these people might say. They could be investigating an entirely different matter, or even the Weisse Macht…never mind, she shouldn't get her hopes up, she told herself. She watched from a corner, pretending to read the paper, as the team walked past and into a restaurant near her gate. Perfect. She ordered a cappuccino, sat down two tables away, and faked being engrossed in the soccer match on TV there.

They spoke English. This was surprising in itself, but then she heard the words "FBI…Interpol...investigate the missing children…" drift over all the chatter, to her ears. Michele strained to hear more. Hotchner was saying "We believe this is a network of un-subs-" (whatever that meant) "-extremely organized, with great access to space and material resources. The people doing the taking, however, are young, and in good physical shape. The captives- we can assume they are still being held, as Katie, one of them, has contacted her family, and no bodies have ever been found. My analyst looked in every possible database. These kids just disappeared."'

"These are very unusual, and I wouldn't say, sadistic or truly cruel unsubs though," a younger, familiar-sounding voice said. He seemed nervous. "Look at Katie's letters. In analyzing them, I found that she has Stockholm syndrome, doesn't seem forced to write what she did and doesn't seem overly stressed. And, judging by her picture, she doesn't look like she's been harmed in any way." Why would one of the agents be defending what they were meant to see as criminals, though? There was a moment's silence, then the young man got up, saying "excuse me, I'm just going to use the bathroom." His back had been to her at the table, but now she saw him. Remembered him. It had been eight years, but how could she forget someone who could tell her so much, from the number of kernels on the average ear of corn to why the Weisse Macht was hunting them?

Neither one reacted, but a minute later, Michele got up and slipped into the men's bathroom. It was the ultimate irony, she thought, that Reid Spencer would have to investigate the very people who'd saved him. The door was unlocked, and Reid was just washing up. "Reid," she whispered fiercely. "You have three seconds to tell me what's going on before my Sig Sauer hits your temple."

Reid knew he had to be quick. "Katie Peltier, an Alliance child now, contacted her grandmother. Who called the police, who called us to help. Then there was another letter, postmarked from right here. So my team and I had to come here. They don't know what this investigation will do! I won't be able to live with myself after this. Plus, I haven't been able to get in touch with my former Guardian to warn everyone. Please, Michele, you have to go up to headquarters and do that for me. I can't leave my team. They can't know about the Alliance, about me. Tell everyone up there to start evacuating now. The children first, then the guardians and others if there's time. I don't know how much time there is until we get another clue. And I just can't storm in there and "free" everyone just so the Weisse Macht can hear about that and kill them later," he pled.

The two of them had no idea that just across the restaurant, two tall, menacing men with shaved heads were hiding behind books. But they had at long last seen their target, after years of not being able to find her. They watched her go. "Let's get rid of some vermin," one said to the other in German.

Michele half-walked, half-ran out to the parking lot. Luckily for her, a friend and fellow former Alliance child was here to catch a flight back to Exeter. She didn't waste time explaining, just barked "I need your bike," grabbed his keys, and tore out of there on his tiny, souped-up Japanese import like a young child running from the monsters in his closet. Oddly, Michele felt good, better physically than she had in ages, as adrenaline coursed through every molecule of her body and the engine screamed in protest beneath her.

The sleek black Jeep raced out after her- she saw it growing in her rearview mirror. Dimly, she wondered who it could be, as the cars the police used were larger and were clearly marked as theirs. She swerved on the crowded road, earning disapproving honks and screeching tires. This was something right out of her training. Evasive driving. Just as she squeezed herself in between two ostentatious, shiny Benzes, she saw the barrel of the gun poking out of the Jeep's passenger side, then, not a second later, heard the rapid, pulsing beat of automatic fire.

Michele sped up even more, the speedometer now reaching 90, but she felt a sharp pain in her chest. I have to keep going, I have to warn everyone, kept running through her head. No matter what the consequences. Still more gunshots perforated the hot air, but all Michele had ears for was the sudden hiss of air from her back tire. Sparks flew from the wheel rim, but she just couldn't drive it any more. Then, a crash. From far away she smelled gasoline and tortured metal, saw herself flying through the air- then nothing.

The two close-shaven men drove slowly by the scene of the crash. If she wasn't dead already, her injuries would kill her within several hours. And the taller one had gotten her in the chest- she would bleed out or die of a punctured lung. On the side of the road like the dog she was. Her kind were so strange, so…unnatural, how could that scum ever plead for equal rights?

Twenty minutes later, the team drove by the wreckage- an ambulance was already there for the young woman, who had luckily, if you could call such a thing luck, been thrown into the ditch rather than into traffic by the force of the collision. The team didn't think the crash had anything to do with their case, but shots were fired, and given that and the extreme nature of the crash, the police chief decided to make a quick stop at the scene. They parked a short ways down the road, and while the others examined the scene and questioned witnesses, Reid hurried towards Michele, motioning for Garcia to come with. "She's with the Alliance too," he explained under his breath. "The ones that were shooting at her are the criminals we actually need to be catching."

Although bloodied, gasping for air, and disoriented, Michele recognized Reid immediately. Reid leaned in to catch anything she might say "Tried to go warn….Weisse Macht…it's them you want, not us…do something Reid," she choked.

"I'll do my best," he promised. But would that be good enough?


	9. Too Close for Comfort

**(A/N: Sorry for the looong wait between updates, but I've been so busy with college, a huge research project, and the Law School Admission Test and working and…you get the picture. I also haven't updated for months because I've been depressed for over a year, and was dealing with self-harm. But, I got some help, and I'm getting things together again. Thanks for your patience. ****)**

Michele couldn't breathe, her chest throbbing painfully; she jolted awake, felt for her gun, her knife, but they weren't there, and she could only move one arm. She tried to sit up, but only got a few inches off the mattress before collapsing. She remembered; she was supposed to go to headquarters and warn them about the FBI, to order an evacuation. Where was her cell phone?

Amy Peltier ducked behind a corner, the sound of guns in the enclosed space ringing in her ears. She was decked out for a fight, panting under a bulletproof vest, Kevlar sleeves, and a helmet. "Cover fire, okay?" she whispered to her friend next to her. Under the steady beat of more gunfire being exchanged, she belly-crawled across the cement floor, careful to stay out of enemy sight and eventually sneaking up on them from behind. Triumphant, she stood up and fired into the surprised man's chest, double-tapping and aiming for the heart, as they'd been trained. "Ha, got you!" she crowed to her boyfriend, whose chest was splattered with blue paint. "You guys lost this round."

"Okay, that's it for today's conditioning then, nice strategy, Amy," her guardian Aleksey, who was running the ten-on-ten drill announced. But these twice-a-month practices were for a serious purpose; if there was ever an attack on headquarters by the Weisse Macht or even an Interpol SWAT team, they had to be ready, and paintball was the closest thing to a real attack, without causing injury.

Meanwhile, Garcia ran the name Aimee Carmichael, Michele's alias, through all her databases; the specific, targeted violence just as they arrived could be connected with the kidnappings, the team thought, so investigation was needed. She didn't come up with much, just some adoption papers that coincided with flight records out of her home area, visas, university records and a British news article where Aimee had spoken about LGBT rights and said that she was a lesbian. Everything clicked; there was a connection between this violence and the kidnappings after all. She called Reid.

"Reid, you knew Aimee/Michele was a lesbian, right? And I'm about 95% sure that it was that neo-Nazi group who chased her down and shot her- but, they wouldn't have been the same ones doing the kidnappings, that's the good guys. So what do we do to make sure the team goes after the real scum here?"

"I don't know, I have no idea," Reid said frantically. "But you'll need to tell the team about everything you found; I can reason it out for them that her shooters and her kidnappers are actually two different unsub groups, since the MOs are so different. I have to go, I think the rest of the team knows I'm distracted from this case somehow. But I still want to visit Michele in the hospital." He hung up abruptly.

"Reid, what's wrong? You seem really off since this case came in." Prentiss asked.

"Nothing," he said quickly. "Garcia just wanted my help making sense of some information, she's going to Skype us with the info really soon." They walked back into the main room of their command center in the Zurich police station, where Morgan's laptop was already ringing with a call from Garcia.

"So I looked into the victim's background. Aimee would be a target for Nazi groups, if we're basing our theory on that the unsubs are neo-Nazi supremacists. A simple Google search told me, she's openly lesbian. I ran her photo against both the US and Interpol databases of missing kids, since she could have been taken from either the US or Europe. Her real name is Michele Delacour, she went missing from a Paris suburb on her thirteenth birthday. But what's more interesting is the pattern of visas, border crossings, and documents. She stayed off the radar until she was thirteen, then got a French passport and a visa to live in Switzerland, and finally, a British student visa. All under her assumed name. She's enrolled at Cambridge, and went to a private school in Zurich before that. Here's the big thing, though. She was, at seventeen, legally adopted by this man here-" Garcia pulled up his passport photo on the screen- "Dr. Jean Nedaeu, a lifelong French citizen now residing in Zurich. But he'll be at work now at his practice. He's a shrink. Texting you that address right now."

"Looks like we're going to pay him a visit. But, why go through all the trouble of adopting- even raising- the victim, just to have her be killed later? Why keep the victims alive and around? Why go to the trouble of providing for, spending lots of money on, and creating a fake identity for them? If I were a neo-Nazi, my interest would be killing the victims as quickly as possible, right?" Hotch asked.

"Maybe this network of unsubs has nothing to do with Nazism. Maybe, the unsubs are just trying to replace children they lost at a certain age," Rossi mused. "Or, this network is a totally different, closed culture, and by kidnapping people, they ensure the survival of their twisted society."

Reid jumped in. This was his chance to make sure the Alliance weren't the ones that they were going to go after. "Or this network of unsubs is _fighting_ the neo-Nazis. It's some kind of guerilla  
"protective custody," or at least that could be how they view it. Because, we've not seen any bodies turn up at all before Aimee/Michele was shot. What if, since she was alone when she was attacked, that gave the neo-Nazis the chance to go for their "immediate kill" while she was away from our unsubs?"

"Listen to the boy genius," Garcia encouraged the team. "His ideas are usually so crazy that they actually work. Reid, weren't you saying that you wanted to visit Aimee/Michele in the hospital? You could go do that, and the team could talk to Dr. Nedeau."

"Yes," he responded. "In fact, I should go there now so I can get a description while the memories are fresh."

Twenty minutes later, as Reid held Michele's hand as she protested that there was no way her guardian had done this to her, the rest of the team burst into Dr. Nedeau's large office in a centuries-old chalet near the top of a mountain. They'd scurried up the stairs to get there, but they really should have gone down instead. They had no idea what was under the building.

Under it, Katie Peltier relaxed in her small underground room, one of so many, after drills. In the next room, her guardian, Anna, rubbed her expectant stomach. She couldn't wait to have this baby- after eight and a half months, she felt like she was going to pop. Another room held hundreds of guns, from pistols to AK-47s, and body armor. Another few rooms were classrooms for the "Alliance children." A library. A shooting range. A lab with the most state-of-the-art electronics possible. Everything was perfectly safe here. Who would think to look?

Dr. Jacques Nedeau was an older man now, nearing his sixty-seventh birthday. Graying hair giving way to white, spectacles, a limp. He was fortunately between appointments when the team entered, which was good because if he had been seeing a client, they would have recognized her or him as an Alliance child or someone involved with it. Prentiss took one look at him, then at the others, as if to say "there's no way he could have done this." He didn't even look like he could run, let alone go on a car chase.

"Doctor, we're with the FBI, doing a joint investigation with Interpol. Your daughter, Aimee Carmichael, was shot and got in a motorcycle accident. Just now, actually. We're thinking that her attack is related to neo-Nazism." That wasn't what Prentiss was supposed to say, but somehow, she believed Reid's idea, that the unsubs were in fact giving children safety, not death. And if that was true, would it be right to arrest the unsubs?"


	10. Prentiss

Chapter 10: Prentiss

Reid sat by Michele's bed, feeling as though he might cry. The team didn't know, but she was his- well, like his little sister. She was sleeping now, after an exhausting cognitive interview. She hadn't seen much of the men, and they hadn't spoken, but she was able to see that they were both big, linebacker-like men with heads completely shaved.

Then Reid remembered them, the two men sitting across the restaurant from the agents. They had left not minutes after Michele had. How could he have missed them? They had had swastikas tattooed on their wrists, he'd glimpsed that much. Cursing himself for his stupidity, his inability to _see_, that had led to Michele lying here like this, Reid felt himself starting to cry. But there was a soft knock on the door of the hospital room. Doing his best to hide his tears, Reid opened it, only to find Prentiss standing on the other side.

"I told the rest of the team- they're busy working with Garcia and the database of missing kids and records, trying to tell which missing kids "belong" to which unsubs- that I'd come talk to Michele as well, because she might be more comfortable talking to a woman. But I see you've already got a good description." Reid was holding a piece of paper, on which he'd drawn his and Michele's best recollection of her attackers. "But I also wanted to talk to you. Privately," Prentiss continued, shifting almost nervously from foot to foot. "Your brilliant mind has been elsewhere for this whole case. You seem so worried, and it's almost like…like…you…this is an unsub you don't feel like catching. What's going on? Why are you crying?"

"I knew Michele," he began, leading Prentiss back into the young woman's room and shutting the door. Michele was out like a rock anyway; she wouldn't hear. They might as well have been alone. Reid lifted the bangs of his hair that fell around his neck, showing Prentiss a tattoo. He had gotten it not long after his abduction by the Alliance; everyone in the organization had one. It was a small, muted white rose. That symbol came out of a Nazi resistance group in Germany by that name, that had fought Hitler even as their members were killed and imprisoned. He then, careful not to hurt or wake her, lifted Michele's head an inch off her pillows so that Prentiss could see she also had the tattoo.

"So you have the same tattoo? You must have been good friends," Prentiss deduced.

Reid swallowed hard. With this case, the truth about him was bound to come out eventually, and Prentiss, after all, seemed to be the one who supported his "hypothesis" that the unsubs were in fact protecting the children, the most. "Our theory that these kidnappings are connected to neo-Nazism and/or white supremacy is true. But not in the way you'd think. Remember my theory that the unsubs are providing protective custody? That's no theory. I know that for sure because…" he suddenly couldn't finish the sentence.

"Why?" Prentiss pressed.

"This network of unsubs kidnapped me, too. Because of my mom's schizophrenia. These neo-Nazi agents were after me even at nine years old. They target children, and don't stop until the target's eliminated. But our so-called "unsubs" were watching me as well. They knew I was in danger. If I hadn't been kidnapped, I wouldn't be alive today. And my name's not Spencer Reid. It's Reid Spencer. They had to change it somehow. Then they let me go on my own when I was sixteen- I got accepted early to Oxford, and by then, my guardians thought I could protect myself. Emily, we can't go after and arrest these people! Most of the kids they're protecting still can't protect themselves. And as soon as the story of these kids hits the media, if they show even one picture of them, or the location, that would be like giving these neo-Nazi bastards an engraved invitation to come kill them. Regular protective custody isn't good enough because these killers _just won't stop._ The kids needed to disappear, which they have. New identities, new countries…I know most families miss them, but if we break in and be heroes and "return" the children, _they will die_-"

"Wait!" Prentiss interrupted. "This means you know where the kids are being held! Does anyone else on the team know about you?"

"Just Garcia. She found my paper trail and figured it out herself."

"Reid or Spencer or whoever you actually are," Prentiss sighed. "I believe you, especially if Garcia has proof. But, where do we go from here? We can try to redirect the investigation so that we go after the real unsubs, the neo-Nazis, or we could sabotage the whole thing. But this team is very, very good at their jobs. They _will_ find the people holding these kids. You know where they are, so any ideas?"

Reid shook his head. "Nothing yet. I need time to think."

In the underground chambers below the chalet on the mountain, a woman cried out in surprise, then pain. "Aleksey, Katie, I think my water just broke! It's two weeks early though- owwwww!" She winced. "The contractions have already started. She really wants to come out! Just take me to the medical area down here, I don't even know if I'd make it to the hospital."

Aleksey's satellite phone rang in tune with his fiancee's groans. "Evacuate within the next 48 hours…impossible! I know there's been suspicions that Interpol and these other agents have been sniffing around the house above the entrance to here, but as long as they don't know the key code, we're safe. And, damnit, I can't fight or leave now! Anna just went into labor!" But, just in case, after she'd been safely ensconced in the medical unit, he ran back out for an extra handgun for each of the three of them, an AK-47, and bulletproof vests. If the police were going to break in here, he would at least go down protecting his wife, his soon-to-be-born daughter, and Katie.

A few hours later, Reid sat bolt upright in his dark hotel room. It was midnight. The idea had been kicking around in his brain for quite some time, and now that Prentiss knew about him, even though what he was about to do was incredibly risky, he couldn't do it alone. Garcia couldn't come with them- she had almost no field experience, and besides, was still unraveling the case even at this time of night. But he sent her a text explaining what he was going to do.

"I'm driving," Prentiss insisted as she and Reid slipped out the back door. Their twenty-minute journey in the black SUV, out of Zurich and up the same mountain where the rest of the team had gone before to interview Dr. Nedeau, was conducted mostly in silence, a tense Reid only speaking when he needed to tell Prentiss where to go. They parked off the road below the house and walked the last quarter-mile.

"A "soft" entry is best in this case, Emily," Reid explained. "Clearly, these Alliance members are not bad or naturally violent people, but if they see guns and vests and a break-in, they might think we're Interpol or even the Weisse Macht. In that case, their first priority is to protect the children, both from being physically harmed and from being "found out," if you will. So they would shoot first and ask questions later. They're very well-armed with all sorts of guns and body armor that they will get at a moment's notice, and even the children have to be able to shoot. And they would. We don't want to scare them." By then, they had arrived at the back door of the house; Reid pulled a bent paperclip from his pocket and picked the lock. They found themselves in a small storage room with two doors. One led to the house, the other, to a basement. Cautioning Emily to be quiet, they slunk down the stone steps. After a little fumbling around in the dark, Reid found the familiar entrance; a secret door in the back of the basement. Two cameras and a nine-digit number entry system was all that stood between the Weisse Macht and the children.

"Hold my hand," Reid whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "If someone's watching the camera and asks who you are, you're my wife, and I wanted you to meet my guardian and see how I lived." She did as she was asked, but the guard for the cameras must have been asleep at his post; no voice was forthcoming from the loudspeaker on the wall.

Reid concentrated intently. "Eight two six…four seven zero…two two eight…got it." There was a magnetic hum and a grinding noise, and the small wooden door disappeared into the stone wall, revealing behind it an imposing metal door with a card slot in the middle of it. Reid pulled out from his jacket pocket an ID that Prentiss had never seen before, and swiped it through, holding the door open for her as well.

"And we're in," he whispered. "Now, the best thing to do would be to go wake up the head of security for this place, tell him everything that's going on, then take over the loudspeaker system down here and use it to brief everyone. Just follow me and stay quiet."

Prentiss was amazed at the technology and sheer _scale_ of the place; a long hallway with dozens of doors, seeming to stretch on forever, lots of twists and turns, and even multiple underground floors. Overhead lights lit their path, and every door had an identical keycard slot in it. "What exactly are you planning to do, Reid?" she asked.

"Order an evacuation of the children, probably the guardians and everyone else as well. I think the team is still a day or two off from finding this place, so it doesn't have to be immediate, but within the next 24-48 hours. The plan is, that when the team and Interpol come running in here, it will be empty. Everyone will be gone. If there are no victims, we can't arrest the "unsubs."


	11. Contingency Plans

Reid led Prentiss further into the long underground maze, finally stopping at a seemingly random door. He swiped his magnetic ID card through the slot in it, but stared blankly at the keypad. "There are two security features protecting the living quarters of the Alliance "unsubs" and the children. First, you have to have an ID like this and swipe it, then each person or group living in this apartment sets their own passcode, which you also need. Unfortunately, I don't know it any more since I left. But this is where I lived for some years- my guardian is the head of security her now." He banged on the steel. "Axel, open up! It's me, Reid! I need to…to warn you. Come on, wake up!"

A bleary-eyed, tall German man with graying-blond hair sticking up all over the place, answered. "Reid Spencer? Is that you? It's three-oh-seven in the morning! And who's she?"

Reid cut him off "You'd better let us in here- the cameras and microphones along the walls here, we don't want them to catch this."

"First, tell me what's going on, and who this lady is," Axel demanded. "You can't just bring anyone in here, you know that."

"It's not safe here any more," Reid whispered cryptically. "You need to let us in so we can plan an evacuation."

The man reluctantly stood aside to let Prentiss and Reid in. As soon as the metal door slammed shut, he asked "So what kind of a time frame are we looking at? And how is she involved in this?"

"You'll need to get everyone out of here within the next 48 hours at the latest," Reid said quickly. "And this is Agent Emily Prentiss. She's on my team- do you remember how I told you I got that job with the FBI?"

Axel nodded suspiciously. Reid continued. "We're close by in Zurich on an FBI case. They caught on to the pattern of abductions that the Alliance had created by taking children to protect them. Only they don't understand that there's no other way but to kidnap these kids. They're…it's a criminal investigation of us. I made Emily understand our aims, and she's on our side. Which is good, because in the next day or two, since my team is very smart and has access to information even the Alliance sometimes doesn't, the FBI and Interpol will find all of you here. There would be a raid; the kids would be taken away to be returned to their families. A media frenzy would ensue, and then the Weisse Macht would be able to find all of the children again. Then the very outcome the Alliance aims to prevent would happen. On a massive scale. Unless, of course, the agents were to burst into an empty organization."

"Your best strategy then, is just to run. Scatter the children and guardians across as wide of an area as you can," Prentiss concluded. "Do you have safe houses? Access to immediate cash?"

Axel nodded again. "Yes. We're very widespread and wealthy. And the safe houses aren't even listed in our computer databases- no one would find the children or guardians there. We need a plan from this idea, though. There are so many variables to consider, and some of our children and agents may not be able to evacuate so quickly. Some of the Alliance children have physical disabilities, a few of our agents are being treated here for gunshot wounds, and…" a scream rips down the hall and through the door, "one of the guardians is currently here, in labor with her child. It's not as easy as packing some clothes and running. We also need to figure out how to prevent the FBI and Interpol from gaining access to any of our computers, and what we should do with our large supply of mostly-illegal guns and ammunition. I'll put some coffee on. We'll work something out."

Reid thought rapidly. "Okay, first you want to evacuate your disabled and injured, after stabilizing them of course, because they'll need to move more slowly. As for the woman, the minute she has the baby, she needs to leave. Even if it got born in the back of a car, that would be better than her still being here during the raid. But, you also want to avoid creating panic in this situation, because what we have here is a few hundred well-trained and armed to the teeth individuals who are willing to die for the cause. There's a possibility of creating hysteria, or causing some to commit suicide or even shoot at or kill Prentiss and I or any agents poking around, because they believe that would protect the Alliance. What I would do right now, is raise your threat level to "highly guarded," and in about-" he checked his watch "four hours, start evacuating those who can't move as quickly. As for the rest of your population, cancel classes, warn that there is serious danger of an investigation here, and have everyone spend the day disabling your computer systems, changing all the entry passwords to the main entrance and common areas, collecting money and weapons, and generally getting ready to flee at a moment's notice. But don't have them leave right away, or everyone at once. You'll need to stagger departures and all head off in different directions using different methods of transport. What I would do is, starting not this morning as in later today, but as in in about 26 hours, begin having people leave. One or two small groups maybe every ten minutes; avoid a mass exodus that looks suspicious to investigators and locals."

"This whole plan hinges on Reid and I's ability to provide you with up-to-the minute intelligence as to the investigation's movement and whereabouts," Prentiss noted.

"And I tried to warn you before, but you didn't answer your phone," Reid said reproachfully.

"Actually, the phone's a funny story. I'll have to tell it to you sometime when the danger passes," Axel said, shaking his head. "We need to use another method."

Reid and Prentiss thought for a moment, then Prentiss spoke up. "I have a Twitter account- Garcia, our tech analyst, wanted me to have one, but I never use it any more. What if we come up with coded ways of sharing that information, and follow each other?"

"Codes are breakable," Axel said doubtfully. "But isn't there also a geotagging feature, that can pinpoint the user's location within some 50 yards? If you update using a satellite phone, it would be even closer- within three feet. So just use your cell phone to upload your location through the site- I can lay a map of the area under your tags- then we'll always know how close you guys are. You could also include a number in your tweets, to say how many agents are coming, and say…colors, like blue, orange, and red, to tell us the level of urgency. That would work, yet no one would see what we're actually sharing on there."

Axel, Prentiss and Reid planned for hours, until Reid realized with a start that it was 6:30 a.m. It was always hard to tell the time down here, with no windows. He and Prentiss needed to get back to the team immediately- they were all probably wondering where they were. So they slipped back out of headquarters. "Good luck," Reid said. "We'll upload our location every 15 minutes and let you know the second anything happens. Be careful, and for God's sake, just run. Don't let anyone have the idea that they can stay and fight and keep this place against all the investigators. It would be a bloodbath, and anyway, our location would already be betrayed even if the agents were killed. Tell them fighting wouldn't solve anything. Evacuation is safest."

Down the hall, an exhausted woman groaned, cried, and sweated. She was having such a hard time- the child was trying to come out feet first, but there was no choice but to try and deliver her like that. "What about a C-section?" her fiancée had asked earlier.

"No general anesthetic. Just ran out," was the terse reply. "Either she goes through a long labor, or we have to cut her open without painkillers."

**A/N: Here's a glimpse at what's down the road. "Aleksey, go stall," Axel panted. "Say you'll get them the kids, but it'll take an hour or two. Then we can sneak everyone out the back." Aleksey first went to Katie. "Come on, you have to go. Anna and I will catch up as soon as the baby's out." "That's going to be a long while yet," the grim-faced doctor said. "No. I understand what's going on," Anna said, barely conscious by now. "Cut me, give me the baby…we'll go." But there was so much blood all around her.  
**


	12. Seven Minutes

The first car, an unassuming late-model Audi, shot out of the short length of underground tunnel that served as headquarters' one entrance and exit. The driver, barely sixteen, knew he wasn't supposed to speed. The FBI were watching for any suspicious activity. But the fear was so powerful in him that he was pressing down on the gas pedal harder than he intended. He knew he was heading to an Alliance safe house, but had no idea if he'd be able to evade the police or where he would go from there.

_Okay. Okay, _he thought to himself. _Let's look at the situation. It's June 21__st__, 5:32 in the morning. I haven't been injured or stopped yet. I have a full tank of gas, 10,000 Euro in cash, my papers and Kevlar vest, a Glock, a shotgun, an AK-47 hidden under the backseat, and extra ammo. I can do this._

It was controlled chaos back at the Alliance headquarters. The intercom system was talking constantly in English, French, and German, and Axel and a translator were controlling the growing crowd near the exit.

"Children first. We're going by age here. We've already evacuated our disabled and injured overnight, as well as those highest-risk. However, if you're a child who can drive for yourself, and your car is here, you move up the list. _Only_ you. Your guardians will catch up with you. Otherwise we're starting with the youngest and moving up. They'll use the cars in the garages here, then our allies will bring their cars by and get people." He whacked his open palm with the side of his hand. "Every. Seven. Minutes. Be ready. Step forward when I read your names and the location you'll go to. You will take, besides your service pistol and papers, one rifle per person and one semiautomatic per party, with extra ammo for each, plus one of these duffel bags with cash."

"What about our stuff?" a scared-looking thirteen-year-old protested.

"Take your computer and any other portable electronics, a jacket, two changes of clothes, and any jewelry or valuables you can fit in your pockets. _Travel light._"

At the police station in nearby Zurich, JJ hurried in to her exhausted team, who had been up since seven a.m. the previous morning. Reid was chugging heavily sugared coffee; he hadn't slept in 48 hours, but couldn't let the rest of the team know that. "JJ, what's going on?" he asked, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice.

"I called and woke up the district attorney. We'll get a search warrant for Dr. Nedeau's practice and the adjoining premises where he lives, because we know for sure he or an accomplice kidnapped Aimee/Michele, and Garcia's research shows he has ties to the people on the suspicious flights- the ones we think the people doing the actual kidnapping are smuggling the kids out on. We'll have the warrant by 7:30 or so this morning, and we have permission to bring ground-penetrating radar and dogs, in case there are bodies on the property."

Reid and Prentiss swallowed hard, looking down to hide their panic. Prentiss pulled out her laptop and quickly updated her Twitter feed with a message she hoped would be understood, and Reid tried to breathe deeply. _But ground-penetrating radar…it's all underground. Interpol and our team will find the headquarters._ They had to stay quiet, though. Reid could lose everything.

An hour and a half later, in a small, sterile room deep inside headquarters, a woman groaned, steadily weakening. Blood pooled around her hips and legs. "We're next on the evacuation list, Anna. If we just get the baby out and leave before the police get here, I can take you to the hospital. Katie- you and Duncan should be getting ready to leave. You have about half an hour. Don't worry about us. Duncan, go pack things for both of you," Aleksey ordered. The dark-haired boy-man (it was his eighteenth birthday,) obeyed, running out.

"The baby's breech," the grave-faced doctor said. "Either it comes out feet first which will really lengthen your labor, meaning the police will probably burst in and arrest you both in the middle of all this, not to mention it's harder on her physically. She's already lost a lot of blood."

"Or…?" Anna asked, her voice a whisper through lips blue from shock.

"We perform an emergency caesarean section. Unfortunately, our supplies of drugs have all been either thrown out or evacuated in order to prevent the Alliance from incrimination, and we didn't have general anesthetic anyway."

"I don't care. Cut me open and give me my baby. Even if I die…she and Aleksey will live on."

"All right. I'm going to clean things, and then you need to hang on. This will be beyond painful."

Aleksey admired how much time passed before she screamed.

Though he insisted she leave, Katie stayed at headquarters until the news came through the Twitter account that the FBI was five minutes away. She was leaning over Anna's limp body; the woman was nearly unconscious, and everyone in the room knew she wouldn't make it.

But the baby was crying, healthy in Katie's arms. She was Anna in miniature, except for Aleksey's eyes. Marie Katherine.

"Take the baby, get Duncan, and go. Forget about us. We're not going to make it," he said, looking desperately at the terrified seventeen-year-old. "Go!"

Just then, the alarm system went off, and a split second before that, there had been the sudden sound of a distant door being broken down.

"All right." Grabbing the baby and a diaper bag, she ran out of the room, colliding with Duncan near the garage. They knew they had five minutes at most. Headquarters was big, but not huge, and the police would be in a hurry. They hurled themselves into Duncan's souped-up Jetta and screamed out of the exit at a hundred miles an hour.

Just as the police ran down the hallway towards the source of the only voices they could still hear inside of the massive warren of rooms, the tail of a bloodstained lab coat disappeared around the corner, and they heard, "I love you. I'm sorry," then two gunshots. Once they broke down that door, there was nothing but two bodies. Interpol and the FBI combed the entire premises, but found no victims, weapons, evidence, or living people. Just skid marks in the garage and on the gravel path leading away from headquarters, smashed and ruined computers, and empty rooms.

Reid breathed a sigh of relief. The place had been found, but the Alliance children would be able to stay safe. The organization would regroup and protect each other. And as for all the forensic evidence…a day later, Reid and Prentiss offered to go to the lab to get the results for the case. And while Prentiss distracted the tech, Reid poured bleach in all of the samples. No one figured out what had happened to them. And most importantly, Reid's secret stayed safe.


End file.
